Post Punk

[linkous]

Post punk was probably my favourite era for music. Generally accepted to have been the period between 1978-1981 (82 at a push). I get the impression it was far more embraced in the UK than the rest of the world, but ready to be proved wrong.

There is an interesting article in the new Mojo. Jon Savage does an overview of the post punk period and there is a list of "20 incendiary 7" singles" in chronological order.

Subway Sect - Ambition
Gang of 4 - Damaged Goods
Wire - I Am The Fly
Siouxsie - Hong Kong Garden
Throbbing Gristle - United
Scritti Politti - Skank Bloc Bologna
The Fall - Its The New Thing
The Pop Group - She Is Beyond Good And Evil
The Prefects - Going Through The Motions
The Raincoats - Fairytale In The Supermarket
The Monochrome Set - Eine Symphonie Des Grauens
The Slits - Typical Girls
Cabaret Voltaire - Nag Nag Nag
PIL - Death Disco
Joy Division - Transmission
The Cure - Jumping Someone Else's Train
23 Skidoo - Ethics
Young Marble Giants - Final Day
Modern Eon - Euthenics
Orange Juice - Falling And Laughing

Not really too much to argue with there, although I might have included Magazine, Joseph K and The Au Pairs, and excluded Modern Eon, The Prefects and The Monochrome Set. I would also tinker with the singles he chose for some groups as follows:

Public Image - Public Image

Rowche Rumble - The Fall

The ‘Sweetest Girl’ - Scritti Politti

A Forest - The Cure

Poor Old Soul - Orange Juice



My own favourite albums of this period are:

Chairs Missing - Wire

Metal Box - Public Image Ltd.

Unknown Pleasures - Joy Division

Fear Of Music - Talking Heads

Cut - The Slits

Grotesque (After The Gramme) - The Fall

The Correct Use Of Soap - Magazine

Entertainment - Gang Of Four

Red Mecca - Cabaret Voltaire

Colossal Youth - Young Marble Giants

Heaven Up Here - Echo And The Bunnymen

Sulk - The Associates

[Tequila Cowboy]

Off the top of my head these few:

[Gator McKlusky]

Dire Straits

[4sooner]

Dire Straits

Pixies - Doolittle

[tinnitus photography]

i would think that the absence of Swell Maps' "Let's Build A Car" is kind of a glaring omission.


post-punk wasn't just isolated to the UK either... this is a stone cold classic that should be included:

[tinnitus photography]

linkous, i dig all of your pics (though don't know too much about Scritti Politti, Cab Voltaire or the Associates).

other bands I think deserve mention:

Second Layer (the band before Adrian Borland formed The Sound)
Red Lorry Yellow Lorry
The Chameleons
Shoes This High (very obscure NZ band that just had their LP reissued via Siltbreeze)
Empire
100 Flowers (post-Urinals)
Fire Engines
The Embarrassment (pre-Big Dipper)
Primitive Calculators (kind of the Aussie version of Screamers)
Mission of Burma (i've heard that the reason they got back together again was that all three of them (Swope bowed out of music) went to see the first Wire reunion tour)

this is also an awesome resource for hard to find things:
http://hyped2death.com/



someone should put together a Spotify playlist.

[linkous]

Dire Straits

Dire Straits definitely qualify for the Post Punk timeline.

Unfortunately they don't qualify merit wise because they are about as forward thinking, exciting and challenging (mandatory post punk qualities) as Meat Loaf or Supertramp.

ps I know you were trying to be sarcastic

[linkous]

linkous, i dig all of your pics (though don't know too much about Scritti Politti, Cab Voltaire or the Associates).

other bands I think deserve mention:

Second Layer (the band before Adrian Borland formed The Sound)
Red Lorry Yellow Lorry
The Chameleons
Shoes This High (very obscure NZ band that just had their LP reissued via Siltbreeze)
Empire
100 Flowers (post-Urinals)
Fire Engines
The Embarrassment (pre-Big Dipper)
Primitive Calculators (kind of the Aussie version of Screamers)
Mission of Burma (i've heard that the reason they got back together again was that all three of them (Swope bowed out of music) went to see the first Wire reunion tour)

this is also an awesome resource for hard to find things:
http://hyped2death.com/



someone should put together a Spotify playlist.

Never heard of a lot of the bands you mention TP, apart from Fire Engines (Candy Skin is a classic post punk single), Mission Of Burma, Red Lorry Yellow Lorry and The Chameleons.

That hypedtodeath site looks interesting - cheers

[linkous]

Recommended reading

[beantownbubba]

I'm gonna say that post-punk was a very different and much lesser phenomenon on this side of the pond. Proving it, or at least backing that up, will have to wait 'til later.

[Kudzu Guillotine]

I'm gonna say that post-punk was a very different and much lesser phenomenon on this side of the pond. Proving it, or at least backing that up, will have to wait 'til later.

To that end, I seem to remember R.E.M. being referred to as "Post Punk". There were also terms like "Post Modern", "No Wave", etc. but I'm not sure if or how they tie into Post Punk.

[beantownbubba]

Other than checking the date of a couple of releases I'm doing this from memory, so apologies if I'm off a little on some of the references.

The first problem w/ talking about "post punk" is figuring out what the hell it means/refers to. As I recall, the term was bandied about so often and applied to so many different styles of music and musicians that it didn't really have any meaning beyond dating the music as having been made after 1978 or so and perhaps describing it as "non arena rock". So linkous, your identifying the groups you deem central is very helpful - I'm basically going to take that as the definition and say that post punk refers to the groups you mention and similar groups from the same time period.

Defined that way, post-punk was basically a non-event in the States. Talking Heads were big and even huge for a moment but I don't think anybody thought of them as "post punk." They came out of the cbgb's scene and even though they weren't punk, that's how they were usually referred to until they went funk and that wasn't called post punk either. As a general observation, the music press in England at that time was much more influential than their American counterparts. So even if a group or a sound didn't have the sales numbers, it could still be the talk of the town in the UK. There really wasn't an equivalent dynamic in the States. Either you had the sales or occasionally you could get recognition through radio play or you were a cult or hip band, virtually unknown out of the trendiest areas of the biggest cities.

I definitely remember Elvis Costello being considered post punk. I assume the reasoning was that it wasn't punk but it was more out of that style than what passed for mainstream rock at the time. Call it post punk by attitude if not musical style. Elvis C was big in hip circles almost from the first but didn't attain mainstream recognition for a while.

To illustrate the meaninglessness of the term in the US, I distinctly remember artists like Joe Jackson and Graham Parker being referred to as post punk. Big bands at the time were arena rock stalwarts like Springsteen and Tom Petty. Boston had broken up by then but you couldn't get away from them on the radio. Peter Frampton and Fleetwood Mac were past their peaks but were also ubiquitous on the radio. Depending on how far into the 80's you want to go, both Prince and then Madonna were bubbling up and then hitting big. Disco was past its peak but still coming up w/ the occasional hit.

Of the bands linkous mentions, none achieved anything close to mainstream popularity/recognition (other than Talking Heads). Echo & The Bunnymen and The Fall were probably the closest. My recollection is that The Cure hit later but if they're considered part of the genre than they were probably the biggest band other than TH. The only American bands that comes close to this definition that I can think of are X (thanks TC) and The Feelies although I'm sure there were others. The Feelies were from NJ so were pretty big in NYC, but even so, that was among the hip crowd, not the larger audience. I don't think they were at all well known outside the NY metro area. X was definitely a big band but my recollection is that they were largely characterized as "punk" even though they came later - I'm pretty sure they were not identified or labeled as "post punk" (just checked on them and AMG calls them the band that put the LA punk scene on the map). I'm assuming we're not considering Blondie as "post punk" but I think this is the era when they had their 15 minutes. Violent Femmes definitely had their moment but I think they were either at the very late end or later than the suggested time frame.

Bands like Joy Division, Wire and Gang of Four were recognizable to the hip crowd but never made a noticeable impact on the mainstream. PiL had a much greater recognition factor but that was due to "Johnny Rotten's" notoriety, not the music, which got virtually no play. Magazine got some press notice but I can't recall a single conversation in which they might have been mentioned.

I was buying a ton of albums in those days. I was no more hip then than I am now, but I was listening to lots of stuff that went beyond what was on the radio or in the popular imagination and I had a guy at the record store I frequented most who was always turning me on (or trying to turn me on) to stuff I wouldn't have found on my own. Even so, I have only a fraction of the records linkous mentions. Not exactly a scientific survey but indicative, I think. Leaving aside Talking Heads my favorites are probably Entertainment and Pink Flag if that wasn't before the cut-off date we're using.

There's always going to be a US scene that's very aware of what's happening in England so none of this stuff went totally unnoticed. But we're talking about a tiny, insular fraction of the larger rock audience and that's w/out even getting into the divide between white and black music at that time. If we're saying that Elvis Costello doesn't count and the Cure were later, Talking Heads has to be the only band listed that had major impact.

[Bill in CT]

I think of Husker Du first and foremost when I think of U.S. post-punk. There were many others though.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post_punk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_post-punk_bands

[linkous]

BB - acts like Elvis Costello, Joe Jackson and Graham Parker were considered New Wave and not post punk in the UK, not sure if you are getting the terms mixed up or if they were tagged post punk in the US - not out with the realms of possibility. I always loved the word "angular" that was used at the time to define lots of the bands I mention in my initial post, I think that word brilliantly describes a lot of the music made in the post punk category circa 78-80. Angular covers the fact that the beats and rhythms were uneven, challenging, unique, forward thinking, but could still be melodic and at times very danceable.
By my own reckoning Talking Heads only made one album that I would tag post punk, and that is Fear of Music. This was probably their most challenging album, especially side 2, and was their bridge to the funk and pop dance that came later. The Cure were possibly post punk around about the time of their debut, but for the majority of the 80's they sailed well away from post punk waters imo.
One thing worth throwing in to the mix is that there might be a misunderstanding of what post punk actually means. To some people it might mean (incorrectly imo) that this term relates to bands that came in the second or third wave of bands that played punk music - eg Husker Du etc. To me it means that the post punk bands were trying to move the music on from 100 mph 3 chords wma bam thank you mam type sounds.

[beantownbubba]

BB - acts like Elvis Costello, Joe Jackson and Graham Parker were considered New Wave and not post punk in the UK, not sure if you are getting the terms mixed up or if they were tagged post punk in the US - not out with the realms of possibility. I always loved the word "angular" that was used at the time to define lots of the bands I mention in my initial post, I think that word brilliantly describes a lot of the music made in the post punk category circa 78-80. Angular covers the fact that the beats and rhythms were uneven, challenging, unique, forward thinking, but could still be melodic and at times very danceable.
By my own reckoning Talking Heads only made one album that I would tag post punk, and that is Fear of Music. This was probably their most challenging album, especially side 2, and was their bridge to the funk and pop dance that came later. The Cure were possibly post punk around about the time of their debut, but for the majority of the 80's they sailed well away from post punk waters imo.
One thing worth throwing in to the mix is that there might be a misunderstanding of what post punk actually means. To some people it might mean (incorrectly imo) that this term relates to bands that came in the second or third wave of bands that played punk music - eg Husker Du etc. To me it means that the post punk bands were trying to move the music on from 100 mph 3 chords wma bam thank you mam type sounds.

Yes, new wave was another meaningless term applied to all those artists. I'm not saying post punk was the correct term, I'm just saying that it was used that way, which is one reason that the term is basically meaningless in these parts. I also understand how you're defining post punk which is why I don't think X for example qualifies. In the same way Pink Flag is probably more punk than post punk, but I saw Wire on the list so i thought i would go w/ it.

As for whether Husker Du et al are punk, post punk, new wave, alt country or arena rock I leave to minds greater than mine. Just looking at the names under 0-9 and A on the Wiki list long enough to be broken down in alphabetical order I think it's obvious that post punk is not a helpful categorization, e.g.: 10,000 Maniacs, Adam and the Ants, A Flock of Seagulls, Laurie Anderson, The Alarm, Au Pairs and Aztec Camera.

[Bill in CT]

While Husker Du started out as a hardcore band, they quickly branched out from that sort of music to become one of the seminal bands of their time. I have often seen them referred to as "post-punk" over the years.

[RolanK]

Trying to classify music in genres is a pain in the neck and an exercise that is doomed to fail... But I'm thinking of post-punk as the younger bands/artist that formed during, and as a result of, the first wave of punk bands in the late seventies. Being inspired by the punk attitude and ethos, but the music not necessarily traditional punk-sounding. In Europe that would be bands like U2, The Smiths, Echo and The Bunnymen, Joy Division, The Jesus and Mary Chain, The Jam, Billy Bragg, Sisters of Mercy and others already mentioned in this thread. In the US, some of the Paisley Underground bands, The Replacements, the first few albums of R.E.M and later on Throwing Muses and The Pixies.

I notice Wikipedia doesn't agree with me in their definition.

Post-punk is a rock music genre that paralleled and emerged from the initial punk rock explosion of the late 1970s. The genre is an artsier and more experimental form of punk.

When I read this, I think of Einstürzende Neubauten.

[linkous]

Trying to classify music in genres is a pain in the neck and an exercise that is doomed to fail... But I'm thinking of post-punk as the younger bands/artist that formed during, and as a result of, the first wave of punk bands in the late seventies. Being inspired by the punk attitude and ethos, but the music not necessarily traditional punk-sounding. In Europe that would be bands like U2, The Smiths, Echo and The Bunnymen, Joy Division, The Jesus and Mary Chain, The Jam, Billy Bragg, Sisters of Mercy and others already mentioned in this thread. In the US, some of the Paisley Underground bands, The Replacements, the first few albums of R.E.M and later on Throwing Muses and The Pixies.

I notice Wikipedia doesn't agree with me in their definition.

Post-punk is a rock music genre that paralleled and emerged from the initial punk rock explosion of the late 1970s. The genre is an artsier and more experimental form of punk.

When I read this, I think of Einstürzende Neubauten.

Rolan, I think you are close to my way of thinking in your reasoning for what could be considered post punk, but I don't think many of the bands you put forward could be termed post punk going by the type of music they released. I am strongly of the opinion post punk was a style of music (see my angular comment), rather than any band that happened to be part of the alt music scene at the time. I also think that bands who came after 1981 probably weren't post punk - ie The Smiths JAMC. Of the US bands that you mention I wouldn't consider any of them post punk. I am now veering towards the opinion that post punk was largely a British scene, and the term means totally different things on both sides of the pond.
If you look at Jon Savages list of 20 post punk singles in my initial post every single one of them was British, the first one was released in 1978 and the last one was released in 1980 - he obviously thinks the scene ended there, I would stretch it to 1981.
I think Wikipedia gets it right with their short but sweet description.
I have just had a look at Simon Reynolds book on post punk -"Rip It Up and Start Again" - and the jacket highlights 11 bands that he presumably thinks are the prime movers and shakers.
They are : PIL, Joy Division, Talking Heads, Throbbing Gristle, Scritti Politti, Gang Of Four, Devo, Magazine, Pere Ubu, The Fall and The Associates.
He writes "The post punk groups were fervent modernists. Experimenting with electronics and machine rhythm or adapting ideas from dub reggae and disco, they were totally confident they could invent a whole new future for music. This spirit continued and mutated with the new pop of the early eighties - Human League, ABC, Adam and The Ants, Dexy's and Frankie Goes to Hollywood". I agree with his timeline, post punk finished as a scene when these more colourful groups appeared in 1981/82.

In his companion piece book - "Totally Wired: Post Punk Interviews" Reynolds reproduces his interviews from the late 70's/early 80's with some of the following:
Jah Wobble (PIL), Alan Vega (Suicide), David Thomas (Pere Ubu), David Byrne (Talking Heads), Steve Severin (Banshees), Green Gartside (Scritti Politti), Martin Bramah (The Fall), Steven Morris (Joy Division), Richard H Kirk(Cabaret Voltaire), Alan Rankine (Associates).

So there you have it. It looks like post punk can have more than one meaning, cover different years, and feature different bands depending on your own interpretation.
My own thinking is that it was largely a British scene, covering the years 1978-81. Certainly that is when the great albums and singles were released imo.

[linkous]

Here is the album that accompanies Simon Reynolds "Rip It Up" book on post punk

[Kudzu Guillotine]

When I hear "angular", I think Pylon.



When I hear "New Wave", I think of the synth heavy, skinny tie bands that populated MTV in the early days. I can also remember R.E.M. being on a New Wave compilation way back in the early 80's on which they stood out like a sore thumb from the likes of Flock of Seagulls, Haircut 100, etc. because they were clearly the most organic sounding band of the bunch but folks didn't really know how to classify them in those days so they got lumped in with the New Wave sensation that was happening then. Same for bands like the Stray Cats who had nothing in common with the New Wave bands.

[RolanK]

Trying to classify music in genres is a pain in the neck and an exercise that is doomed to fail... But I'm thinking of post-punk as the younger bands/artist that formed during, and as a result of, the first wave of punk bands in the late seventies. Being inspired by the punk attitude and ethos, but the music not necessarily traditional punk-sounding. In Europe that would be bands like U2, The Smiths, Echo and The Bunnymen, Joy Division, The Jesus and Mary Chain, The Jam, Billy Bragg, Sisters of Mercy and others already mentioned in this thread. In the US, some of the Paisley Underground bands, The Replacements, the first few albums of R.E.M and later on Throwing Muses and The Pixies.

I notice Wikipedia doesn't agree with me in their definition.

Post-punk is a rock music genre that paralleled and emerged from the initial punk rock explosion of the late 1970s. The genre is an artsier and more experimental form of punk.

When I read this, I think of Einstürzende Neubauten.

Rolan, I think you are close to my way of thinking in your reasoning for what could be considered post punk, but I don't think many of the bands you put forward could be termed post punk going by the type of music they released. I am strongly of the opinion post punk was a style of music (see my angular comment), rather than any band that happened to be part of the alt music scene at the time. I also think that bands who came after 1981 probably weren't post punk - ie The Smiths JAMC. Of the US bands that you mention I wouldn't consider any of them post punk. I am now veering towards the opinion that post punk was largely a British scene, and the term means totally different things on both sides of the pond.

Well, maybe you're right. I don't know. I guess this is my problem with genre definitions in general. It may work on song level, perhaps on album level, and only in some cases on a band level if one look at a complete catalog. I may confuse myself with "movements", "scenes" and "musical style". As an example; The Clash was punk maybe the two first albums, but with London Calling I don't they were punk anymore. Still, everybody tends to label them as a punk band. The bands I was referring to as post-punk were bands that I think one could claim never would have existed if it wasn't for punk in the late seventies. I think that is true for both U2 and The Smiths for instance. But perhaps only as far as for their respective debut albums. Once they were discovered and became what they were/are, I think they defied being labeled that way.

So there you have it. It looks like post punk can have more than one meaning, cover different years, and feature different bands depending on your own interpretation.

Right on!

[beantownbubba]

It looks like post punk can have more than one meaning, cover different years, and feature different bands depending on your own interpretation.
My own thinking is that it was largely a British scene, covering the years 1978-81.

In case it's not clear from my prior posts, I agree w/ this.

[tinnitus photography]

Though they came a bit later, Proletariat is definitely one of the finest post-punk US bands.

[dogstar]

think the main difference between the UK and the US was that in the US the disco culture in places like New York took the attention of a lot of the kids who would have gravitated toward a more UK style of post-punk. Also bands like Talking Heads and Blondie were embracing the disco and rap cultures.

If you look at bands like ESG, Liquid Liquid and the stuff Arthur Russell was putting out you get the same sort of angular music that Linkous mentioned above but oriented more toward a dancefloor. The tradition has carried on into modern day bands like The Rapture, LCD Soundsystem and the DFA collective.

[Tequila Cowboy]

See and if you look at Wikipedia for a list of Post Punk Bands you get something very different than what you guys are talking about and is more in line with I always thought:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_post-punk_bands

This is why all labels of music suck.


edit: I didn't see that Worldwide Bill had already posted this. Labels still suck though.

[John A Arkansawyer]

This is why all labels of music suck.

It isn't a label's fault if someone (not you, I hasten to add) misuses it.

[tinnitus photography]

what if the label, like post-punk, is hopelessly ambiguous?

[RolanK]

And while we're at it: What about Post Rock? Any analogy to the Post Punk label whatsoever?

[Tequila Cowboy]

what if the label, like post-punk, is hopelessly ambiguous?

They pretty much all are. Look at Alt. Country or Southern Rock or Art Rock or any of the rest of them. They're just ways to pigeonhole art into marketing schemes.

[tinnitus photography]

At least Top 40 has a clear quantitative meaning.

Edit - Classic Rock has a pretty specific population.